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Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD)SIMAiRNCT07474207

Social Identity Mapping for Adolescent Recovery

A study testing SIM-AiR in people with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), run by Massachusetts General Hospital at 1 site in United States.

Not yet recruiting

Opening soon. The study is approved but enrolment has not started yet. Sites may already take enquiries.

Sites and contacts
Official record
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Trial summary

The goal of this clinical trial is to address the gap between clinical treatment and adolescents' lived social environments by developing and testing a novel, interactive intervention-SIM-AiR-that directly targets social risk and protective factors. Read more about this study

Who is it for?
Ages 12 to 19 years
Conditions the study is for
Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD)
What is being tested?
SIM-AiR
Could I receive a placebo?
No, everyone receives an active treatment
How many people
60 participants
Where
1 siteUnited States
Study dates
1 Aug 2026to Aug 2028
Phase
Interventional
Are there results?
Not yet: the study is under way

Key requirements

Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.

  • Ages 12 to 19 years
  • All sexes
  • No healthy volunteers
  • Child, Adult

Who may be able to join

  • Eligible participants are adolescents (ages 12-19) enrolled as outpatient clients at an addiction treatment facility.
  • Meet criteria for alcohol use disorder (mild to severe) as per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-V).
  • Be able to speak, read, and understand English.

Who cannot join

  • Refusal to give informed consent, or if under 18 years old, do not have a parent willing for them to consent to participate.

Trial locations and contacts

1 site in 1 country. Contact the study team or a site near you to ask about taking part.

United States1 site
  • Recovery Research Institute; National Center on Youth Prevention, Treatment, & Recovery; Harvard Medical School

    Boston, Massachusetts, 02114

    Emily A Hennessy, PhD, 9784730222, ehennessy@mgh.harvard.edu

    Emily A Hennessy, PhD

Other trials in United States

About this study

The goal of this clinical trial is to address the gap between clinical treatment and adolescents' lived social environments by developing and testing a novel, interactive intervention-SIM-AiR-that directly targets social risk and protective factors. By helping youth visually and cognitively process their social identities and networks, SIM-AiR seeks to support more enduring recovery outcomes in adolescents (12-19 years old) with alcohol use disorder (AUD). The specific aims of this study protocol are to pilot the SIM-AiR intervention module and collect participant acceptability feedback and preliminary outcomes. The main questions it aims to answer are:

What is the acceptability of the SIM-AiR treatment module from the perspective of participants? Do participants' acceptability ratings of the SIM-AiR treatment module vary by personal and/or social network characteristics?

Clinicians will implement the SIM-AiR with an adolescent client. Clinicians will provide feedback to the study team on their experience to support future implementation. Participants will complete the SIM-AiR module during a treatment session with their clinician and participate in data collection with study staff (e.g., surveys, interviews) following the treatment session.

Read the detailed description
  1. Specific Aims and Objectives The specific aims of this study protocol are to pilot the SIM-AiR intervention module with 60 adolescents (12-19 years old) with alcohol use disorder (AUD) and collect patient acceptability feedback and preliminary outcomes. 60 adolescents receiving outpatient AUD treatment will be recruited to receive the SIM-AiR module and to participate in study visit to collect acceptability information.
  2. General Description of Study Design This is Aim 2 of the R34 grant proposal, which is an intervention development grant. Aim 1 of this grant is pilot work directly with clinicians to finalize the treatment module. The SIM-AiR module will be incorporated as a single session for patients attending adolescent outpatient treatment program. In line with the aims of this as a pilot project, investigators will recruit clinicians to pilot the SIM-AiR and then our study team will conduct a single study visit with the clinician to get their feedback and with the adolescent to collect their acceptability feedback and other characteristics to consider necessary steps adaptation for implementation in a future larger clinical trial. As a pilot study, our focus will be on recruiting adolescents already seeking AUD treatment.
  3. Study Procedures After the adolescent participant has consented, the participant will be able to schedule their intervention session and study visit. The clinician will deliver the SIM-AiR in an individual treatment session with an adolescent client that will occur sometime after their initial treatment session. The session will be audio-recorded for fidelity. After each session, clinicians will be asked to complete an online survey about their immediate impressions of implementing the SIM-AiR with their client. The participant will also complete an interview after the first implementation of SIM-AiR to get immediate feedback on any areas that need to be adapted for future implementation. As clinicians conduct more SIM-AiR sessions study staff will conduct interviews, as necessary, to collect any new feedback on the procedure and materials. The adolescent participant will also be scheduled to participate in data collection following the treatment session with a member of the study team. A subset of adolescents will be selected for the interview. For those clients, the survey will be followed by the brief, audio-recorded interview with a member of the study team. Description of intervention: The clinician would engage the adolescent participant in the activity of social identity mapping (SIM) and use that to have a discussion, using motivational interviewing principles, about their social networks and social influences (supports, barriers) for treatment and recovery. The SIM process involves posing a series of questions to produce a visual map of the individual within their social network using paper, markers, and stickers. The SIMs capture the following data: size of social network via the number of social groups represented, each group's importance to the individual, number of days/month spent with each group, one's level of identification with each group, level of conflict between self and each group and between each group with each other, level of commonality between self and each group and between each group with each other, alcohol and other drug use among group members, type of group. The clinician would follow the SIM process with a motivational-interviewing styled discussion to elicit reflections from the participant and specific action steps the participant can take in their recovery process when with members of their social network. Description of data variables to be collected: Adolescents will be asked to complete an electronic survey to capture psychosocial characteristics. Clinicians will also complete a brief survey and an interview.
  4. Statistical Analysis

There is no plan to conduct interim or futility analyses given the pilot nature of the clinical trial. Alpha levels will be adjusted as appropriate depending on whether preliminary analyses or reviews of collected data are done, as well as when conducting any confirmatory a priori-specified analyses. The analysis will examine the acceptability of the SIM-AiR from the adolescent perspective by their Treatment Satisfaction score. In addition, distributions, descriptive statistics, and correlations for all survey measures will be examined including components from the SIM (i.e., number of groups, importance of groups, and sober versus substance-using groups; degree of importance and identification with low- and high-risk groups) to examine whether a participant's acceptability rating of the SIM-AiR varies by personal and/or social network characteristics. The analysis will take descriptive qualitative and constant comparative approaches to examine major themes related to the acceptability of the SIM-AiR module.

Being tested
SIM-AiR
Keywords
Social network, Social Identity Mapping, Alcohol use disorder, Treatment, Addiction recovery, Adolescents
Medical subject headings
Alcoholism

What participants receive

What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.

  • SIM-AiRBehavioural

    Also called SIM, Social Identity Mapping

    The clinician would engage the adolescent participant in the activity of social identity mapping (SIM) and use that to have a discussion, using motivational interviewing principles, about their social networks and social influences (supports, barriers) to treatment and recovery. The SIM process involves posing a series of questions to produce a visual map of the individual within their social network using paper, markers, and stickers. As this is a pilot study, this will be done once.

Study groups in NCT07474207
Study groupRoleWhat they receive
SIM-AiRExperimentalAs this is a single arm study, all participants will receive the SIM-AiR treatment module.
Receives: Behavioral: SIM-AiR

What is being measured

The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.

  1. SIM-AiR Acceptability (Treatment satisfaction)

    The acceptability of the SIM-AiR module from adolescents' perspectives will be assessed using the validated Treatment Satisfaction scale. Participants will answer 5 questions on a likert scale of (1) 'Strongly disagree' to (5) 'Strongly agree'. Scores range from 5-25, with higher scores indicating a greater satisfaction with the SIM-AiR module.

    Measured: Baseline

  2. SIM-AiR Acceptability (Adolescent Treatment Engagement: Counseling Rapport sub scale)

    The acceptability of the SIM-AiR module from adolescents' perspectives will be assessed using the validated Counseling Rapport sub scale of the TCU Adolescent Engagement Form. Participants will answer 11 questions on a likert scale of (1) 'Strongly disagree' to (5) 'Strongly agree'. Scores range from 10-50, with higher scores indicating a greater rapport with the treatment counselor.

    Measured: Baseline

  3. SIM-AiR Acceptability (Acceptability of Intervention Measure)

    The acceptability of the SIM-AiR module from clinicians' perspectives will be assessed using the validated Acceptability of Intervention Measure (AIM). Clinicians will answer 4 questions on a likert scale of (1) 'Completely disagree' to (5) 'Completely agree'. Scores range from 4-20, with higher scores indicating a greater perceived acceptability of the SIM-AiR as a treatment module.

    Measured: Baseline

  4. SIM-AiR Appropriateness (Intervention Appropriateness Measure)

    The appropriateness of the SIM-AiR module from clinicians' perspectives will be assessed using the validated Intervention Appropriateness Measure (IAM). Clinicians will answer 4 questions on a likert scale of (1) 'Completely disagree' to (5) 'Completely agree'. Scores range from 4-20, with higher scores indicating a greater perceived appropriateness of the SIM-AiR as a treatment module.

    Measured: Baseline

  5. SIM-AiR Feasibility (Feasibility of Intervention Measure)

    The feasibility of the SIM-AiR module from clinicians' perspectives will be assessed using the validated Feasibility of Intervention Measure (FIM). Clinicians will answer 4 questions on a likert scale of (1) 'Completely disagree' to (5) 'Completely agree'. Scores range from 4-20, with higher scores indicating a greater perceived feasibility of the SIM-AiR as a treatment module.

    Measured: Baseline

Timeline

From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.

  1. First posted16 Mar 2026
  2. Study start1 Aug 2026 (estimated)
  3. Primary completionOct 2027 (estimated)
  4. Study completionAug 2028 (estimated)

Resources

More details

For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.

Study design
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Phase N/A
Primary purpose
Treatment
Allocation
Not applicable
Intervention model
Single group
Masking
None (open label)
Enrolment
60 participants (estimated)
IDs, dates and publications
ClinicalTrials.gov ID
NCT07474207
Sponsor's protocol ID
2025P001514
Other IDs
1R34AA032288-01
Acronym
SIMAiR
Status last verified
Mar 2026
First submitted
6 Mar 2026
Last updated
16 Mar 2026
Results posted
No
Data monitoring committee
Yes
FDA-regulated drug
No
FDA-regulated device
No
Individual data sharing
No: Given the size of the trial and the proposed participant sample, the potential risks to breaches of confidentiality are too great.

Publications

  • Jurinsky J, Cowie K, Blyth S, Hennessy EA. "A lot better than it used to be": A qualitative study of adolescents' dynamic social recovery capital. Addict Res Theory. 2023;31(2):77-83. doi: 10.1080/16066359.2022.2114076. Epub 2022 Aug 29.

    PubMed 37008756
  • Hennessy EA, Jurinsky J, Cowie K, Pietrzak AZ, Blyth S, Krasnoff P, Best D, Litt M, Johnson BT, Kelly JF. Visualizing the Influence of Social Networks on Recovery: A Mixed-Methods Social Identity Mapping Study with Recovering Adolescents. Subst Use Misuse. 2024;59(9):1405-1415. doi: 10.1080/10826084.2024.2352618. Epub 2024 May 13.

    PubMed 38738809
  • Blyth SH, Pietrzak A, Rodriguez WA, Litt MD, Kelly JF, Hennessy EA. A Qualitative Examination of Addiction Disclosure and Stigma among Recovering Adolescents. Addict Res Theory. 2025;33(4):286-293. doi: 10.1080/16066359.2024.2431598. Epub 2024 Nov 28.

    PubMed 40785814

Questions about this trial

What is this clinical trial studying?

A study testing SIM-AiR in people with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), run by Massachusetts General Hospital at 1 site in United States.

The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.

Who may be eligible to take part?

The sponsor lists 3 inclusion and 1 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.

Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?

The record says: opening soon, as of the sponsor's last update on 16 Mar 2026. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.

Where is the study taking place?

The record lists 1 site in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.

What are the possible benefits and risks?

They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.

Are results available for this study?

This study is still under way. Results are not available in the source record yet.

How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?

Contact Jaden Femrite (978-473-0222, jfemrite@mgh.harvard.edu), or a site near the patient. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.

What does the primary outcome measure?

SIM-AiR Acceptability (Treatment satisfaction) (time frame: Baseline). The study lists 5 primary outcomes in all. It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.

Where can I read the original study information?

On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT07474207, which also lists 3 linked publications.

Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?

No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.

How often is this information updated?

AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 16 Mar 2026.

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